ShenXian Hotpot

501 W Garvey Ave #108, Monterey Park
(626) 576-8028

Recent Reviews

Portida T.

50/50 probably wouldn't come back. But definitely try it once kind of place. 3.0 Just OK-- Worth it for lunch, but not a good value for dinner. They advertise 23.99 AYCE lunch and 29.99 dinner. It was an odd experience to say the least. In the whole restaurant, there is one server. Yes, just one. This server's main job is to refill meats for your table. A robot delivers the meat to your table. The meats are sliced very thinly so you'll be calling over the server at least 3x for a group of 4. Broth: Mild spicy sichuan peppercorn broth and bone soup. Both super bland. That was kind of a bummer but the sauce bar helps out with that kind of. There's a sauce bar, fridge for veggies, seafood, noodles. There are 2-3 cut fruit options and 2 desserts. It sounds amazing, but was just ok. Other Yelpers mentioned not so fresh ingredients but I thought it was just ok. Not super fresh or super gross. Parking: underground parking entrance on the side street of Ynez which is always nice Verdict: I think I would pay exponentially more to dine at Haidilao or even down the street at Hot Pot Hot Pot. The server kept quietly looming over to our table without saying a word. We had to ask for hot pot ladles... (ladles weren't given) The only perk was the napkin dispenser on the table.

Clara C.

I had high hopes for this new AYCE hot pot spot. What I didn't like was that the self-serve ingredients didn't taste fresh. They barely had any customers, so it made me think that they don't throw out the old stuff. The service was great though. The guy who helped take our order was doing everything that night. He cleared our dishes and made sure that we were doing ok throughout the meal. There was a robot who brought some meat and special orders! It spoke Chinese, but you just have to press the button to send it away. We got two different soup bases. The spicy one at spicy level was SPICY. I'd recommend getting medium or below if you want to enjoy your meal. The meats were ok. The portion size per plate is pretty average - a bit more than Momo Paradise, who gives you 3 slices of beef per plate lmao. The garlic at the sauce bar is STRONG. Be careful not to eat too much! I found parking on the adjacent street easily. It's free street parking.

Shannon W.

I love trying new hot pot places since 626 is the land of hotpot and boba.. and the robot def lured me here. lol they're in the same plaza as tea brick and i recommend parking underground. i love that this place has so much variety and instructions plastered nearby so you know how to grab things and such. the veggies are always fresh and the sauce bar is plentiful. the meat is also good quality and the soup base feels clean and flavorful and not loaded with packaged MSG soup base. the ambiance is relaxed and each table has enough space to enjoy their food. Our server was a nice older gentleman who has really great EQ. he easily picked up that it was my first time and did not hesitate to guide me in how everything works . They also have nostalgic chinese childhood drinks as well. def will be returning. he also lowkey gave us a homemade dessert to try so be nice to your server ;)

Cynthia Tieu

We had the mild spicy, mushroom, miso, and bone broth. All were good, not great. Liked the meats as they were sliced extremely thin but they only gave you a 3 to 4 slices each tray so we had to hunt down the waitress sooo many times to get more. The self serve selection was good but the appetizers were to salty and the fruits looked old/frozen and thawed --not fresh. Service was terrible. There was only one waitress. Poor thing was running around like crazy but at least she still maintained her cool. We had to get our own utensils in the cupboard, asked for hot water 5 times, use our old plates to get food from the self serve area over and over again, because no one replaced the plates and bowls during the duration of our one hour meal, no one refilled our broth or removed our dirty dishes. It was a stressful meal. Probably won't be back.

Chelsea C.

We came on Memorial Day and since it's a Holiday, they used dinner prices all day. I didn't mind because dinner price includes lamb and lunch doesn't. Soup base: Bone Broth and Mushroom Broth. The bone broth reminds me of Bak kut teh, a Singaporean bone soup. The mushroom broth is savory and umami. I prefer the mushroom broth, but I ended up mixing them both in the end. Meats: We ordered beef, beef rib eye, lamb, chicken, and pork belly. I enjoyed the beef rib eye, lamb and pork belly. Seafood, mushroom, tofu, and vegetables are in the refrigerator and you can take it from there yourself. All the items share the same tongs though; so if you have bad food allergies, this might not be the place for you. All the items seem fresh. They do have a sauce bar. Service: There's only one staff that takes orders and they have cute robot servers that brings you your orders. Parking: There's a parking lot for the plaza.

Jess E.

Found out about this AYCE hot pot place. I really enjoy their Mild Spicy soup base and they have a nice selection of meats with the options to get seafood and vegetable varieties at their buffet bar. The servers here are very kind and friendly even though sometimes it could only be one person working out front. Definitely recommend this place!! PS: BE VERY CAREFUL, the spicy levels here are monumental. I tried the medium spicy the first time here (and the server did warn me before how spicy it was). Most places usually under-spice things but the medium was almost like having ghost peppers in the broth.

Heidi C.

Took my mom here for an early dinner/late lunch & it was absolutely lovely! It was our first time trying a broth with numbing spice & it was definitely an experience! We're both fans of putting a few shakes of Tabasco on eggs/pouring chili oil on instant ramen/eating spicy kimchi & we thought the mild spice was a little intense for us once the broth was really hot. (If you're local, I usually get a "3" for Mian's noodle soups & I can handle it just fine). I thought the selection was fine & the service was wonderful, especially the bots that delivered our meat! I'd definitely come again, though at this price I think I'd save it more for treating folks to their first hotpot or birthdays or something a little bit more special than eating on a weekday.

Ralph B.

This could be my favorite hot pot in the area! I had been looking for a good AYCE one, and decided to try this based on its great review score. I really liked the food, and it's a pretty good deal as well. The use of robots to deliver our meats is great, it's also funny to witness the occasional robot traffic jams. I will say they need more actual humans to take your order (or use tableside tablets like some other spots do). It's also amusing that I see one review mention "Sneezing" here--I think it's because the spicy broth is super spicy and you basically are inhaling vaporized hot peppers if you get one of them. It really cleared out my sinuses. :) My favorite thing here is the lamb--I kept ordering it over and over, it's so great. I don't think I've seen this cut at many other hotpots.

Krissy K.

I was disappointed in this restaurant. I came here based on the amazing reviews, but you have to read the negative reviews to know why it's subpar. Most of the 5 star reviews are a couple sentences long and only reviewed by people who have only 1 or 2 reviews ever written. It makes you question if these are legitimate reviews. Upon entrance there was no one to greet us. After about 5 minutes of just waiting around, we were finally seated. There's only 1 person attending 5 tables. I read from other reviews that with a party of 3, we are allowed 4 different soup base. This wasn't the case, we were only allowed 2 soup base. We got the mild spicy which isn't mild at all, but rather extremely spicy. Soft drinks aren't included in the AYCE like other AYCE hot pots. Since there was only 1 person working, it was hard flagging her down. She was very nice though. Only thing that made this experience okay. Meats are delivered on a robot which is a cool concept. Not the best quality of meats. Vegetables, seafood are self served in a very small corner. The area got crowded very fast. They do a have a selective sauce bar which I thought was nice. It was not worth the $30 even if it's AYCE. There are other AYCE that is worth the price.

Alex L.

Not sure how this place got its high ratings as the taste was medicore at best. Their customer service was ok for an Asian place and their meat quality was also ok; however, their sauces are all watered down and not authentic, and their soup bases were really salty. Since I think the soup base is the most important part of Chinese hotpot, I cannot give this place more than 2 stars. Additionlly, I did not like how their AYCE price only covered part of the menu, which made ordering confusing.

Jasmine Z.

Beep boop. Did someone say robots? A table of 3 can choose up to 4 soup flavors. We did mild spice (disclaimer: this mild one is still very spicy!), mushroom, tomato, and bone broth. Dinner is AYCE for $30 dollar per person (90 mins). Pros: - Robots are cute. They can speak and bring the meats/dishes to the table rather quickly. - Our waitress (Wendy) was so nice and friendly. I'm pretty sure she spoke at least 3 languages fluently (Mandarin, Cantonese, English). What a boss. - I liked the varied selection of seafood, veggies, and fruit at the self-serve counter - Lamb slices were so good! Probably the best meat out of the ones I tried Cons: - Not many staff working so sometimes it was hard to get service. I know Wendy was working so hard, but there's only one of her. - The sauces at the sauce bar were kind of iffy. They felt pretty diluted ngl. The garlic one was especially questionable. - The mild spice broth is not really "mild". I tend to handle spice pretty well and this one was still a little too hot with all the peppercorns and whole red chillis. Overall, probably a 3.5/5, but I rounded to 4 because of Wendy. This is a cool experience to try once, but not that different or special compared to other hot pot places. Quality might also be a little worse although the selection is greater.

Iceegreen Z.

Wow. Best hot pot place I've been to in years. Robot servers, all you can eat sides, excellent service.... It's a dream come true. Careful if you get extremely hot. It's basically just a jar of peppercorns and peppers dumped into your soup. Lol ... but still tasty. Can't wait to come back!

Gena J.

I would give them 1 star if the robots weren't so darn cute. Price was 23.99 for lunch. To say the least, this place didn't offer much when it came to fresh food and good service. I read previous reviews before coming here, raving about soups and their good service, yet I never saw any of these. I ordered the mild spicy and miso soup split it with my partner. The soups flavor wasn't that great, I'd give it a 2 out of 5. The mild spicy wasn't too mild and they add way too many spices in the actual soup that I couldn't pick off my mushrooms or veggies. The meat was extremely thin and didnt ever feel like we ate enough. Our waiter was surprised when I kept ordering more meat? His reactions were very off-putting after he told me not to worry and that it's ayce so I can order more. The self service bar was nice. But also was extremely awkward to have to wait for other people to get their seafood and veggies so you have to stand there and wait. The seafood was okay. Not too fresh and seemed like it was frozen before hand. They had a nice selection of vegetables, no enoki mushrooms which are my favorite. They also had sides like this sweet cabbage salad and some sort of salty tofu. Randomly had stale baked hot cheetos as a part of their snack bar lol The service was sub par. The waiter was hard to wave down and we had to go up to him one point because he was so busy with the other nonexistent customers. Mind you its Monday so it wasn't busy at all. And everything's pretty much self service too so I'm not sure why he was so busy. The robots are a pretty cool touch and I think that's really what lures people into coming here to eat. But yeah I was very displeased by our waiter, we waved him down and he'd make his way to us but then stop at a table on the way to take their order first. And he seemed pretty capable of coming over fairly quickly when it was time to pay for the check. Definitely won't be going back to this spot.

Eva L.

I'm honestly a bit perplexed by all the good reviews. My friend and I are kind of self declared hot pot queens. After all the good reviews that we stumbled upon here, we had to make a visit during our visit. Now to preface, we have an excellent hot pot scene in NYC. I usually seek out hot pot when abroad and I would suggest going to Hai Di Lao first for a good point of reference. Main Points: - The soup bases: We decided to order four soups in order to try more flavors. All of them were lacking in flavor, the mildly spicy was just mala(numbing) with no flavor besides that. The tomato oddly was just tart and not much tomato flavor either. The bone was bland and the miso which had the most flavor was just a tad bit salty and that concludes all the flavor that we observed. - The sauce bar: How can you f*** this up right? The sacha which is a standard in chinese hot pot was oddly watered down with a lot of oil. If you open a standard can, the oil to sauce ratio is usually 40%oil/60% sauce. This was pretty much just sacha flavored oil (90%oil/10%sauce). Super duper odd consistency. I'm also unsure what their garlic is. It was foamy and white. I'm like 80% sure this was just garlic flavored water/oil mixture where the liquid was blended. I was able to get one bulb of garlic from the bottom that I ground into my sauce. (Every other hot pot place I've been to served either minced garlic or a garlic paste mixture.) They also have a relatively small selection of sauces (Around 12 or so?) - The Self Service Bar: Standard hot pot items, quality wise, wasn't the worst but also wasn't the greatest. Wish they would've had silken tofu like I'm used to. Wish they had bigger plates so I could have grabbed a little bit of everything instead of grabbing multiple plates but it is what it is. - The Service: They were super friendly but really understaffed. It was quite hard to wave down a server to order more meats. They were kind of just zooming past tables with empty plates or drinks. The robots were cute but honestly I think more of a hassle with people having to grab their own items from the self service bar. Probably would work better if they had less customers walking around due to the self service. A couple of times, two of the robots were in a conundrum when one of them trying to get to a table and the other one was returning to the kitchen. Tldr: Soup was bland and lacking in flavor, sauces were watered down. Overall would definitely skip this place the next time I'm in town.

Miranda R.

YOOOOOOO. I've never had food from a hot pot restaurant and I'm in shock at how good it was! I wish I had heard about this sooner but I'm glad I got to try it tonight. 4 different types of broths to marinate meats and veggies with. Plus awesome/cute robots serving you!!! Def recommend it for first time or someone looking for a new hot pot place! THANK YOU YUM :)

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